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Crowdfunding Investigative Journalism in Chinahttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/04/crowdfunding-investigative-journalism-china/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/04/crowdfunding-investigative-journalism-china/#commentsThu, 17 Apr 2014 22:21:30 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=171564Beijing has long exercised control over information by directly supervising official media outlets, issuing censorship directives, and creating incentives for independent organizations to self-censor. As technology has allowed a huge increase in the cache of publicly available information over the past decade, the government has adapted its measures to leverage the new media landscape. Over the past year, the Xi administration has made moves to reinforce control of traditional and new media by mandating reporters undergo training in the “Marxist view of journalism,” and cracking down heavily on social media. Amid this diverse atmosphere of official propaganda, The Economist looks at the new methods journalists are adopting to report freely:

LIU JIANFENG began his career as an investigative reporter with noble ideals about serving the public interest. After 20 years in the job, even working for some of China’s more outspoken publications, he felt increasingly manipulated. He also believed the public was hungry for fact-based reporting untainted by the state’s agenda. Casting around for a solution, last summer he announced on his microblog that he was becoming an independent journalist.

Five years ago such a move would have been all but impossible. But now, trading on his reputation as an honest reporter, through his microblog on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, and on Taobao, an e-commerce site, Mr Liu raised 200,000 yuan ($30,000). That helped him produce his first long investigative report about a land dispute between villagers and their local government in Shandong, an eastern province. The report, which is available on Mr Liu’s blog, has not (yet) caused him problems. “Writing at length and in detail is a way to protect myself from accusations of malpractice,” he says.

[…] Since a crackdown on microblogs last year, many users have gravitated to WeChat, a smartphone-messaging application. It has emerged as a relatively unconstrained platform for free-thinking opinion. But in mid-March there was a sudden shutdown of dozens of prominent accounts. The “WeChat massacre”, as it became known, was a fresh warning to free-thinkers, though it has not yet scared users away.

Like other journalists, Song Zhibiao uses his WeChat feed to create what he calls “self-made media”. He posts news and commentary on controversial subjects, such as the mismanagement of official coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Around 13,000 people subscribe to his WeChat feed; some donate up to 500 yuan. Despite some financial success, Mr Song sees two hurdles. Relying on donations from a public used to consuming free media is not sustainable, he thinks. And muckraking in China can be risky. If you are on your way “to seek truth”, he says, you may in the party’s eyes be on the road to commit crimes. […] [Source]

“I would like to be an independent writer and social issue observer. With the help of supporters, I will be able to conduct investigations and to reveal the problems during political reforms, and to tell people’s stories during social changes,” Liu said in his July post.

[…] “I didn’t want to work with my hands tied any more,” he said in a phone interview in early February. “I realized I could work individually and independently, without having to affiliate with any publication.”

[…] Liu set up a store on Taobao, an eBay-like platform, where he offered customers “reading access” to his work for 100 yuan (less than $20). Those who pay get exclusive email access to his stories several days before Liu publishes them on his blog, which is fully accessible in China. […] [Source]

A Chinese journalist who posted allegations of corrupt dealings during the privatization of state-owned assets has been formally arrested on a defamation charge, his lawyer said.

The Beijing People’s Procuratorate approved Liu Hu’s arrest on Sept. 30, lawyer Zhou Ze said by phone today. Liu, who worked for the Guangzhou-based New Express, had been in detention since Aug. 24, according to Zhou.

[…] “I think they chose Sept. 30 to approve the arrest because everyone was on holiday, no one was paying attention,” Zhou said, referring to China’s National Day holiday, a seven-day break that began the next day. [Source]

On July 29, Liu accused Ma Zhengqi, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, of dereliction of duty during his time as party secretary of a local district in Chongqing. Liu had posted these allegations on his microblog.

[…]Wary of any threat to its authority or social stability, the party has also stepped up its already tight controls over social media to limit public discussion of sensitive political issues.

[…]Chinese President Xi Jinping has made fighting graft a top theme of his new administration, and has specifically targeted extravagance and waste, seeking to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the party.

[…]”Weeks after the government passed a new rule criminalizing ‘online rumours’, a well-known whistleblower is arrested for defaming officials — the message cannot be clearer, and it is likely to further silence Chinese netizens who are already quite worried,” said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Liu’s Sina Weibo account has since been deactivated. Police had first confirmed his arrest in August, accusing him of fabricating and spreading rumours.

[…] The outcome of Liu’s call for an investigation is in stark contrast to the fate of another senior journalist, Luo Changping, who last year made similar public accusations against Liu Tienan, the deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission.

In August, Liu Tienan was sacked from his post, expelled from the Communist Party and placed under investigation. [Source]

With his five cellphones constantly ringing, it is not easy these days to get the undivided attention of Zhu Ruifeng, a self-styled citizen journalist whose freelance campaign against graft has earned him pop-star acclaim and sent a chill through Chinese officialdom.

[…] A former migrant worker with a high school education, Mr. Zhu has become an overnight celebrity in China in the two months since he posted online secretly recorded video of an 18-year-old woman having sex with a memorably unattractive 57-year-old official from the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. The official lost his job. Mr. Zhu gained a million or so new microblog followers.

The takedown was just the opening act, Mr. Zhu says. He promises to release six more sex videos that he predicts will make a number of other men run for cover. “I’m fighting a war,” he said with characteristic bombast, his voice a near-shriek. “Even if they beat me to death, I won’t give up my sources or the videos.”

[…] Mr. Zhu, who began his Web site in 2006, largely relies on whistle-blowers to funnel damning evidence to him. Through the years, he said, he has exposed 100 officials, bringing down more than a third of them. He has been threatened and beaten; more than once, he says, he has been offered huge sums of money to delete an incriminating post from his site, which is called People’s Supervision.

Nevertheless, his crusade has cost him. He has chosen to end his marriage, he says, rather than see his wife, a P.L.A. officer, suffer retaliation from his adversaries. “To be honest,” he told The Times’ Jonah Kessel, “I would like to tend to the big family in sacrifice of the small family.”

Powerful interests were searching for his sources, he explained over lunch last Friday [January 25th]. Police detained one contact in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the scandal had erupted, Zhu said. They traced a second source to Henan province, hundreds of miles away, and had questioned that person at least twice.

Two days after that conversation, the police showed up at Zhu’s home in Beijing. They banged on his door Sunday night and demanded that he come with them. He refused but reported to a police station Monday morning, where he was held for more than seven hours. Police officers from Chongqing pressed him to hand over five sex recordings he hasn’t made public and to tell them the identities of his informants. They threatened that “if you don’t present evidence, you will be in violation of national law,” according to Zhu’s account.

The pressure on Zhu suggests that despite Communist Party rhetoric about an all out campaign against corruption, limits remain. The party’s leader, Xi Jinping, said shortly after being installed in November that failing to crack down on corruption would risk the downfall of the state. But while Beijing has dismissed some wayward officials and canceled extravagant banquets that stoked resentment among average Chinese, it so far seems set on keeping a tight grip to keep the process from spinning out of control.

“Zhao was officially arrested on December 31 for extortion,” Zhang said yesterday, adding that she had been “brainwashed” by a company she left in 2009 to secretly record herself having sex with officials to give the firm leverage. “After all, she was young and a victim herself.”

[…] Zhao has drawn support on social media, with internet users hailing her as a heroine for exposing corrupt officials.

Many have compared Zhao’s case with that of Deng Yujiao , a hotel waitress who in 2009 stabbed to death a local party official in Hubei and wounded another after they tried to force themselves on her.

Deng was charged with assault, rather than murder, but walked free on grounds of diminished responsibility after having received widespread support from the online community.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/sex-tape-blogger-zhu-ruifeng-thrives-as-muckraker/feed/0HK Proposal Called a Threat to Investigative Reportinghttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/01/hk-proposal-called-a-threat-to-investigative-reporting/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/01/hk-proposal-called-a-threat-to-investigative-reporting/#commentsFri, 11 Jan 2013 03:00:36 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=149812The Wall Street Journal reports that the Hong Kong government is considering a proposal that activists and journalists argue would hamper local press freedom:

In a paper submitted to the legislature this week, the government proposed blocking public access to the personal information of company directors. Such a change would pose a threat to “most of the investigative reporting in Hong Kong,” said Mak Yin-ting, who chairs the Hong Kong Journalists Association and calls the proposal the biggest threat to local press freedom since the city’s showdown over a proposed anti-subversion law in 2003.

Currently, the public is allowed to access to the full addresses and ID numbers of company directors via company registry searches. If passed, the changes included in the government’s new Companies Ordinance would stop the public from being able to easily view such data from next year.

Such information has been at the heart of numerous investigative reports in the past year, Ms. Mak said, citing stories that embarrassed multiple local cabinet members as well as blockbuster exposés of Chinese official wealth by Bloomberg and the New York Times, among others. Hong Kong is frequently used as a haven by Chinese officials seeking to obscure their finances in a tangle of local companies.